European Islam
European Islam is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the European peoples of the Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Turkey) and parts of countries in Eastern Europe with sizable Muslim minorities (Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and some republics of Russia) which constitute of large populations of European Muslims. Historically significant Muslim populations in Europe include the Ashkali and Balkan Egyptians, Gorani, Torbeshi, Pomaks, Bosniaks, Chechens, Muslim Albanians, Ingushs, Greek Muslims, Vallahades, Muslim Romani people, Balkan Turks, Turkish Cypriots, Cretan Turks, Yörüks, Volga Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Lipka Tatars, Kazakhs, Gajals, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in Turkey, although the majority are secular.
The terms "European Islam" and "Euro-Islam" were originally introduced at a conference presided by Carl E. Olivestam, senior lecturer at Umeå University, in Birmingham in 1988, and subsequently published in the Swedish handbook: Kyrkor och alternativa rörelser ("Churches and Alternative Movements"). "European Islam" defines the ongoing debate on the social integration of Muslim populations in Western European countries such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. There are three Islamic scholars who participate in the debate on "Euro-Islam": Enes Karić, Bassam Tibi, and Tariq Ramadan, who adopted the term in the second half of the 1990s but use it with different meanings. The foremost Western, Non-Muslim scholars of political science and/or Islamic studies involved in the debate on "Euro-Islam" are Jocelyne Cesari, Jørgen S. Nielsen, and Olivier Roy.